The mobile week that was in 5 links

On the menu for Week 6

Apple's latest crack down, some bad news for Google, an insider's take on China's app ecosystem, Facebook's Graph Search goes mobile, and insights on the new global game publisher alliances.

Apple cracks down on IDFA (TechCrunch)As we reported earlier this week, Apple has started rejecting apps retrieving IDFAs for purposes other than serving ads. We already commented on the potential consequences of this move for the mobile advertising industry, but the bottom line is: do not collect IDFAs if your app or game is not showing any ads. We will keep you updated on further developments.

Is Google losing grip on the Android market? (alistdaily)A new report by ABI Research shows that Google is losing ground on the Android market, caught up by forked versions of Android (also called AOSPs or Android Open Source Project), such as Amazon. Out of the 77% Android market share in Q4 2013, 52% were certified Android and 29% AOSPs, vs 58% and 22% respectively in Q4 2012.

10 app stores hold the distribution power in China (Glu Mobile on PocketGamer.biz)Chris Akhavan, president of publishing at Glu Mobile, forecasts further consolidation in the Chinese Android ecosystem, with around 10 stores holding most of the distribution power. In our wrap-up of the PGConnects East Meets West conference, we already mentioned that being present on 15 to 20 app stores in China, out of the hundreds available, is sufficient to capture over 80% of the traffic. Akhavan also predicts that WeChat will become as dominant in China as Kakao is currently in Korea.

Facebook started testing Graph Search on mobile (TheVerge & Mashable)The social network has begun extending the online tool to a few beta testers on mobile, in an effort to take a larger footprint in search. It will be interesting to see how this feature can be leveraged for app discovery and user acquisition.

The globalization of the app market - how developers strike alliances across continents (Forbes)Forbes explores Western mobile game publishers' strategy to get into the Japanese market, and vice-versa. As a reminder, Japan is world's most lucrative market for app store revenue according to App Annie.

Thomas Sommer
Thomas heads up content marketing at AppLift. As such he’s in charge of sourcing, curating, creating and distributing insightful content to increase visibility and thought leadership for the company. Thomas loves to scrutinize the relentless and trilling developments of the mobile industry. You can follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.